Bios Needed (0347, go5700, bios ID 4.36.20.34.da) for a Sony Vaio

[docphil]

Hi guys,

After having carefully read this forum since a couple of days, I decided to post my request here :)

I own a desktop Vaio VGC-V2M which ran smoothtly since 2004.

Since a couple of months, the screen display started to get corrupted, displaying

artifacts ands bugs randomly: sometimes as soon as the Vaio boots(at spalsh screen, before windows starts loading), sometimes after several minutes, and sometimes it just ran smoothly. But, as time go by, the problem occurs more and more oftently, and now windows will just hang on at startup with many

weird bugs (like glitches and offsets) on the screen. The kind of graphic bugs you exactly have when you try to overclock too much a video card (which is not my case).

It appears that changing down clock values with coolbits.reg make things much better. The Vaio runs for several hours without hanging nor artifacting, but....

But the issue there is that these new values are loaded at windows startup. So the go5700 just boots with its default initial (and crashy) clock frequencies.... And from time to time, the artifact issue just appears from the splash screen. This causes windows (in fact : the driver) to restore frequencies at their initial values, since windows 'sees' there a problem and just think 'okay, this guy modded the frequencies, I guess he has tried to overclock, so now I restore values to prevent failures'.

But this windows behaviour is not what I want.

So the only solution is to mod the fx go5700 bios, in order lo lower initial frequency values.

This is an issue since rivatuner, nvflash, atitools and other famous softwares just fail in dumping the bios (nibitor just gathers non-relevant infos, atitool crashes and nvflash just dont work).

Of course, not being able to dump my bios keeps me from modding it :-/

This 5700 go is very special since it has 128 MB ram and his DEV_ID is 0347, instead of the well known 0348.

So the request would be : Looking deperately for a 0347 BIOS , or, I take my chances on it, a 128 MB 0348 BIOS, hoping I won't kill my motherboard. Well, I have no other choice anyway.... The Viao is unusable as is.

Thank you for reading this until this point.

Doc. :)

[Fabrice Roux]

When you get artifacts during the boot from a cold PC... it could mean that your graphic card is having troubles in the memory area. Since you found that downclocking calm the issue down... you could be facing a classic overheating.

Get a canned air from the local video/electronic store and clean the cooling intakes, fans and grills on your laptop.

[®®®]

Great post docphil. I have experienced the same artifact issues you described very well... and narrowed it down to bad Video RAM. After 4 years of almost 24/7 usage the heat inside my (heatwise very well designed) laptop has killed parts of the mobo... in my case apparantly the VideoRAM. I checked it with a tool called MicroScope.

I think you will have no luck in finding someone who have dumped correctly the 0347 BIOS for your VAIO as it's implemented/integrated (like in some TOSHIBA's too) in the System BIOS :) I tried all known tools, but it's not possible by normal means to create a working backup of VBIOS.

[docphil]

Great post docphil

. I have experienced the same artifact issues you described very well... and narrowed it down to bad Video RAM. After 4 years of almost 24/7 usage the heat inside my (heatwise very well designed) laptop has killed parts of the mobo... in my case apparantly the VideoRAM. I checked it with a tool called MicroScope.

Well, this is my conclusion too... I'll try MicroScope.

I think you will have no luck in finding someone who have dumped correctly the 0347 BIOS for your VAIO as it's implemented/integrated (like in some TOSHIBA's too) in the System BIOS :P I tried all known tools, but it's not possible by normal means to create a working backup of VBIOS.

Yes I think you're absolutely right.

Fabrice :

I think you're absolutely right too : Your advices are good ! In fact this is the first things I tried :

I disassembled the vaio and, after having cleard dust, I decided to dig a huge hole in which I added a CPU fan, extracting hot air :-)))

My nice looking vaio is now completely hacked, it was the only way to be sure it was cold enough.

Though, you gave me a VERY GOOD idea :rofl: : the video fan is EXTRACTING the warm air.

I'm gonna hack the fan socket so that I invert wires and the fan will be BLOWING fresh air, thanks to the hole I digged.

as a last resort, I will plug my solder iron :) and try to unsolder 2 of the four memory chips.

If i'm VERY lucky, the result will be a go5700 with 64 working MB. :)

Hoping that the nvida system will be able to automatically deal with a new memory config, like the very old S3 video card we could ehance by adding memory chips on it.

Thank you for your suggestions gentlemen.

:P

[Fabrice Roux]

I wish more newcomers would be like you... solder iron geeks. :)

Usually the air flow is optimised for air being sucked from either/both one side or underneath the laptop... then pushed thru the fins of the heatsink. Reversing the fan rotation is likely to make things worse.

Since you chainsawed your laptop... try replacing the thermal paste. So the heat transmission between the chips and the heatpipe is optimal.

[docphil]

:) "Chainsawed" the case

That's exactly the correct word.

Well , I did try to clean and add my own thermic paste with no success.

I hacked alsmost each single part of the cooling system.

I added heatsinks on the memory chips, ... but issue still remains.

I'm defenitely going to unsolder the faulty memory chip.

Question is, which one should I unsolder :P :)

I did not find relevant info about Microscope, since google will show thousand results with such a keyword.

Would someone have a link to this software ?

I'd love to find a soft being able to test nvram and, let's dream a bit, to give an indication about the bad chip, or at least the faulty addresses (if it is a lower address, we could imagine that it is the first chip #0, for example)

Well, I whish I could fix the Vaio like I fixed another laptop , a toshiba satellite 6100 pro, which have a weak connector that you need to resolder (this fixes a lot of RTC, batteries, display and network issues !).

Thank you again for your suggestions.

[Fabrice Roux]

I have to admit that naming a software with a common word is kinda stupid... Silicon Boobs might be the worst example. With HardOnBluePill close second.

The query on Google is: microscope "hardware diagnostic" which leads you to Micro-Scope page.

[docphil]

Some news !

Well, it's bad news.... :)

This was the last resort operation (unsoldering memory chip).... But it failed.

Time of death ... 7:20pm :P

Anyway... This Vaio was dead before coming on the soldering operation table...

I'm gonna recycle the proc, the RAM and the HDD, and assemble a new desktop PC with those parts.

It was worth trying...

Ho, by the way , I figured out what I was suspecting ....

There are 4 memory chips. on the PCB they are labeled M2 M3, M6, M7.

Assuming that the very beginning of the VRAM was faulty (beacause I had bug at splash screen), I unsoldered M2.

Which gave large vertical stripes as a result...And this is quiete normal I presume :

Instead of stacking each memory , it appears that the VRAM is like RAID-0 for HDD, i.e. in striping mode.

It obvisouly, I presume, dramatically increase video read performance.

I think I'm right because when i unsoldered M3, I had twice the vertical missing/buggy stripes.

This is good to know :)

I'm not sad, this was a desperate rescue try, it was worth it.

Thank you guys for your support and ideas !

Phil

[Fabrice Roux]

Try to turn the lcd screen into a video projector...

Finish the rest of the laptop with a sledgehammer on Youtube.

[docphil]

:-)

since the internal lcd connector is in LVDS format, I'm thinking about recycling it into a basci LCD display...

And perhaps empty the old vaio motherboard and replace it with a brand new mini itx Mobo....

Would be fun !